Bonds, equities & potato prints

Source: BVI Beacon taken on 20 Jan

For those of you who don't quite know what I do when I sit in the office in the mornings (I think that is everyone?) what I'm really doing is paving the way, through my growing knowledge of the stock market, for my first mega yacht - like the one above..  When we first saw it on Monday morning on the way to school  the boys were jumping up and down screeching "look at the submarine" - which it does look a bit like, or maybe something out of a ropey Austin Powers movie

But  I, of course, knew better.  Because of my job (monitoring the performance of our trusts and mutual funds under investment) I get to do a lot of reading of the Wall Street Journal, Bloombergs, the FT & Yahoo Finance,  which means I'm learning an inordinate about Russian oligarchs, 'Wealth & How to Spend It' and mega yachts. So I just happenend to know that this yacht, called 'A' is the largest mega yacht in the world and belongs to some 30-something year old Russian. You can read all about it in the WSJ link above.  Now, we do get to see our fair share of mega yachts in the 'Hood, but this one really takes the prize for unfettered ostentation and FUness - all $300 million of it. Anyhow, nothing like a little bit of bad taste to brighten up a Monday, and T tells me that they went and scraped it on the Scrub Island dock as well, so that made us feel even better.  





Boys at Sailing Club

 We've had a good week with T still doing day shifts and things getting back to the new normal. Our children are becoming as scheduled as any other global, middle class kidsters - with soccer, sailing, extra maths etc. Luckily we get to chuck it all up and go to Cane Bay Garden on a Friday afternoon - the kids get to play with about 30 of their best friends until the sun sets, and the moms have a few Painkillers or GODW (glass of dry white) and relax a bit. This Friday was extra special, as the fisherman trawlled their nets off the beach, and they had 30 over-excited expat children 'helping' them bring in the fish. This was all happening as the sun was setting. The cruise ships had all gone, there were only 'locals' on the beach and it was so magical that we were all secretively thinking that this was exactly the reason why we put up with island life, for moments like that. Wish I had my camera there.

My solution to digging myself out of  melancholy is usually to get hyper-organised and 'do things'.  In a moment of pure madness, I signed up to run a craft workshop for 5 year olds once a week (WHY?) and now I'm faced with my first one on Wednesday. I'm feeling hugely daunted - flat-out terrified actually, and will understand the psychology of it all at some later stage - but there you go. I'm running a toddlers craft group. Amazing.

Counting 1-2-3

Clouds are still hanging low over both the island and me, so I'm counting my blessings 1-2-3 to try and cheer myself up:

1. Not many boys...

.........get to go on a real treasure hunt, on a yacht, around various deserted islands, now do they? This is exactly what Georgie did last Saturday for his friend Derek's 8th birthday party. This is the lively crew above, and the picture right is the explorers on Salt or Ginger Island, not sure which, finding clues to locate the treasue. We picked up Georgie about 5:30 and then went and joined some friends who were SUPping (Stand Up Paddling, for those of you who didn't know this important Caribbean acronym) at Brewers Bay, and enjoyed a Savanah as the sun set. (I'm ignoring the fact that I also lost my new Calvin Klein sunglasses in the dark - but what are  'mere things' when you have Supping at Sunset?).

2. We now have the BBC...

.......having loaded  'My Expat Network.Com'  on the laptop, we can now watch the BBC live online. William is glued again to CBeebies, and apart from live streaming, you can also watch programmes that you missed for up to a week afterwards.  Now, we just need to track down a cable that joins up the laptop to the actual TV screen. We also get the (English) Sunday Times delivered to us on Monday (ie The Monday Times) so I can really read the TV Guide purposefully.

3. I have found a classical radio station... 
.... although it is in Spanish and has a heavy leaning towards what I call 'ballet' music, it still feels fab to have Mozart instead of Shaggy, for a change.  In this vein - we have also found out that the boys can take their Royal College of Music exams on the island and do not need to fly to London. I have also - rather rashly - promised to take them to concerts in New York, in our self-declared war against cultural isolation. I suspect I may be setting the bar rather high here.  

4. T is starting to do some day shifts....

....which means we get to see him occasionally. Today we are meeting him at the beach at 3:30, which is something we havn't done in a while. Last night we even went out for dinner date, but unfortunately chose the worst restaurant on the island, and were finished by 9pm. 

5. Howmay people have a Rasta gardener?....

........I now have Irwin from Domenica, who has a spiritual connection to my flowers and veggie patch and who has to be the most fabulous gardener in the world. I've even started my new orchid collection. Everything grows like weeds here. Jah power?

Alright, I'm feeling much better already and I can even think of more - a potential trip to NYC for my birthday, a Kindle that downloads in a blink, the fact that my nephew spent time with my Ma in London - but speaking of which - William has stumbled into my bed, where I'm writing this, and wants his CBeebies fix, so better sign off.

Another day is starting here on the island. It's Sunday, so that means that the CLEANER comes today (better whizz around and tidy everything up, otherwise it gets chucked into the washing machine) and there's no bigger blessing than that, I can promise you!

New year, Old lives

Judging by the number of emails I'm starting to receive again, everyone is getting into the new year. It's lovely to hear from everyone again.

Not sure if it's all the endless unpacking that is causing some cosmic disturbance, the 24/7 single-parenting, the mind-numbing repetiveness of domestic drudgery, the fact that we have only had one car for the past 3 weeks (as mine has a BURNT OUT CLUTCH - so no surprise there) and our garage appears to be scouring the world for a part via the internet, blah de blah de blah.

Anyhow I've started off the year a bit blue, which is a good thing I suppose, as things can only really go up from here.

I'm missing big things & small:  ironed sheets, old friends, long driveways, sports in the afternoons, laughing about obscurities, the cosiness of familiarity

In this new year, I'm feeling slightly daunted by everything new. The island bit is not so difficult ( turquoise sea with bad roads) but the rest is. 

By next year, everything will not be so very new new new.  So here's looking at everything old - good or bad.  I'm saying Happy Old year and Brave New year to all of you! 

Thank You

Make your own free greeting

Christmas Box

Well, a  Merry Christmas and  Happy New Year to everyone - here's hoping for world peace, an end to poverty and in my case a liver that needs some serious time-out in January.

The past 3 weeks have been pretty intense, but good. My mother has taken to island life like a brown boobie pelican to the Caribbean Sea and seems to have enjoyed her time here. She hasn't even missed TV, though I suspect she has watched just a little bit too much Dreamworks & Walt Disney for her liking  and is ready for a good dose of BBC.

The festive season kicked off with a real bang - I had my office Christmas lunch and the First Annual Girly Chrimbo (Christmas Blow Out) Dinner on the same day- so had to pace myself a bit, as they both involved getting on boats and a lot of alcohol.  I survived both and was even joined by Tyler at the Girly Chrimbo which moved from The Last Resort to the Cabanon, the local nightclub dive where we all had a jolly good opskop and lots of fun. We realised that it was actually the first time T and I had had actually gone out for an evening without the kids. Amazing.

The next major highlight of the season was the arrival of our 40 foot container - roughly the same size of our (furnished) house last Tuesday and the knowledge that we had 16 adults and 18 children for Boxing Day lunch (why o why do we do these things to ourselves?). Anyhow more than half the boxes and furniture went straight into storage, and we are still wading through piles of junk (Tyler has 3 pairs of long john thermal underwear for skiing, for example) and just so much STUFF.  So we unpacked and unpacked and unpacked and unpacked (you get the picture) and we'll eventually get there, but at the moment it does feel like a very high mountan to climb. It is wonderful having our things again however.

Christmas Day was spent  with all our local 'family' and we had turkey and all the trimmings. Father Christmas was also very well desposed towards the Caribbean this year and lucky moi got her Kindle, and the boys got their well-travelled Hot Wheelers. T got a large contribution to his iPad and the day off.

In fact T has actually been very brave and changed jobs. You may all recall that his first adventure into BVI Cheffing had its challenges, and long story short - he is now the Sous Chef at Scrub Island, a new 5 star resort owned by Marriot (http://www.scrubisland.com/) with a large professional kitchen and in charge of all the baking and patisserie. He's very pleased and enjoying himself a lot.

Boxing Day we had a good old braai and all our new friends came to sit amongst the boxes, giving new meaning to the day  (Boxing Day - geddit?!)  and it was very chilled with people leaving around 7, and us collapsing into the bubble wrap.

We knew we could push ourselves, as we were off to do nothing at Cooper Island for the week, and that's exactly what we did, apart from a wonderful dive to the RMS Rhone on Tuesday and reading 2 books (Freedom - Jonathan Frantzen) and Chris Cleave (absolutely brilliant). We also ate and drank a lot, musn't leave that out. The weather wasn't brilliant - but as you can see from the photo which really looks like a cheezy postcard, this is a relative thing.

New Year was spent at Trellis Bay Fireball Party, all very new agey with calypso thrown in - but where in the world could you take your 81 year old mother and 5 year old boy, and still have a good time? T was working (Foie Gras stuffed morels, Kobe beef etc) but joined us just after midnight and we still hooked up with the Clatworthies around 1:30 for a glass of champagne. Like we really needed another one,

Today we all feel a little shell-shocked but are off to yet another invitation, New Years Lunch - so I need to dash, but just wanted to post all our family news.

We've been thinking so much about all of you around the world - in New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, South Africa and England - and thank you all for your wonderful support and patience with our family  this past year. It has all been pretty hectic, but we think we've laid down some good foundations for the future and we're all still in one piece (it was a bit touch and go at some points along the way!)  but we're looking forward to 2011 - the year in which everything hopefully stays exactly the same as last year!!

Lots and lots of love to you all and all possible health, wealth & happiness for 2011. xxx